Friday, June 8, 2018

6-5 Pergamum - last day in Turkey

This is our second longest travel day to the ancient site of Pergamum perched on a hilltop just above the modern town of Bergama. The entrance looks like most all of the sites. Souvenirs, drinks and snacks before the ticket office.

Then you walk up the hill to the site. Library ruins below.

This is a replica of what was here. The original statue is in some famous museum somewhere in the world.

A group of school children were touring the site as well. We could often hear them off in the distance shouting out numbers or other answers to questions in Turkish.

Temple of Trajan.

City walls in the background.

Theatre from 3rd century BC. Capacity of about 10,000.

Tunnel to go through to get from the area of the Temple of Trajan to the theatre.

Theatre in the lower left. Ruins of Temple of Trajan in background.

Young men running down the steep steps while we huddled in the doorway looking down.

View from near the library ruins overlooking Bergama.

The base of what was the Altar of Zeus. The original was moved to Berlin's Pergamum Museum in the 1870's.

As we drove down the hill, our guides stopped at a spot so we could take a picture of the temple below. It honors some Egyptian goddess.

We stopped for coffee in Bergama - across the street from a Roman bath house.

Our last stop of the day was at the Asklepieion. This was a healing center. The layout looked very much like a modern hospital. The great physician Galen was born here in AD 129.